1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a musical tone signal-generating apparatus, such as an electronic musical instrument used for musical training or the like, and a control program therefor, and particularly to a musical tone signal-generating apparatus and a control program therefor which are capable of easily reflecting various user's settings thereon using user's usage data stored in a portable storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, it has been proposed to customize the settings of a single electronic musical instrument shared by a plurality of users e.g. in a music class, on a user-by-user basis, so as to make the environment of the instrument suitable for each user, e.g. in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-58160. According to this patent publication, information of user-specific settings is stored in the instrument. Further, there has also been proposed a technique of causing an electronic musical instrument to store tone color information, registration data, and musical composition data, in a portable storage medium, so as to allow another electronic musical instrument to use the tone color information, the registration data, and the musical composition data, by reading these data from the portable storage medium.
In this conventional technique, however, the portable storage medium that stores information for use in setting up an electronic musical instrument is limited to an only one type, and therefore, when another electronic musical instrument is not compatible with the storage medium, it is impossible for this instrument to use the information. Further, even when an electronic musical instrument uploads information for use in setting up the instrument to a server through network communication, another electronic musical instrument which is not equipped with the network communication function is not capable of downloading the information from the server, which makes it impossible for this instrument to use the information.
Furthermore, for the other electronic musical instrument to use the information obtained from the storage medium or the server, the user has to carry out a command operation for gaining access to the storage medium or the server, retrieve proper information from information available from the storage medium or the server, and then give an instruction for downloading the proper information, which requires time and labor.